This Present Darkness (68 page)

Dunlop picked up the other end.

“Jimmy, Hogan and Busche are being released on personal recognizance. Turn them loose.”

Jimmy gave him some more dumb questions.

“Just do what you’re told and leave the paperwork to me! Now go!”

He slammed down the phone and disappeared into his office. The receptionist continued looking out the window at all those people. They were starting to sing again. It sounded kind of nice.

BERNICE, SUSAN,
and Kevin waited nervously for either a very good or a very bad thing to happen. Either Brummel would play ball, or they would be getting high on tear gas within minutes. But then they heard an engine starting up across the street.

“Hey!” said Kevin.

Susan still wrung her hands a little. Bernice just watched, unwilling to believe anything good too quickly.

The old Ford pulled away, with both Kelsey and Michaelson in it.

Bernice didn’t want to wait around. “Let’s pack all this stuff in that suitcase again and get over to the courthouse. Marshall’s going to need a catching up.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice!” said Kevin.

All Susan could say was, “Thank you, God. Thank you, God!”

ALF BRUMMEL HEARD
only one short segment of one telephone conversation, the one between Bernice and State Attorney General Norm Mattily. He knew Mattily’s voice, and, yes, it made perfectly good sense that Eldon Strachan would go to Mattily,
if
Strachan had some genuinely reliable information.

Brummel cursed aloud. Reliable information! All Mattily had to do was find this blankety-blank recorder sitting here, tapped illegally into all those phones!

The receptionist buzzed him. He reached over to his desk and hit the intercom switch.

“Yeah?” he said very crossly.

“Juleen Langstrat on line two,” she said.

“Take a message!” he said, and flipped off his switch.

He knew why she was calling. She was going to nag him, remind him to be there at the afternoon meeting involving Sandy Hogan.

He opened the other cabinet door and pulled out the records and stored tape recordings. Where in the world could he stash all this stuff? How could he destroy it?

The receptionist buzzed him again.

“What?”

“She insists that you talk to her.”

He picked up the telephone, and Langstrat’s oily voice came over the line.

“Alf, are you ready for today?”

“Yes,” he answered impatiently.

“Then please come as soon as you can. We must prepare the energies of the rooms before the meeting begins, and I want to have all things in unison before Shawn arrives with Sandy.”

“So you’re really going to bring her into this?”

“Only as a safeguard, naturally. Marshall Hogan is out of the way, but we must be sure we keep him there, at least until all our efforts and visions have been fulfilled and the town of Ashton has been afforded its victorious leap into Universal Consciousness.” She paused to relish the thought for a moment, and then asked rather nonchalantly, “And have you heard any news of our runaway burglar?”

Before he even knew why he was doing it, he lied. “No, nothing yet. She’s out of the way.”

“Certainly. I’m sure she’ll be found soon enough, and after today she will have no hope at all.”

He said nothing to that. He was suddenly distracted by a thought that poured over him like a ten-foot wave:
Alf, she believed you. She really doesn’t know!

“You will be here immediately, Alf?” she asked and ordered at the same time.

She doesn’t know what’s been happening, was all Brummel could think. She’s vulnerable!
I
know something
she
doesn’t!

“I’ll be right over,” he said mechanically.

“See you soon,” she said with an authoritarian finality, and hung up.

She doesn’t know! She thinks everything is going fine and there will be no trouble! She thinks she’ll get away with it all!

Brummel let his thoughts race as he considered his options, his newly acquired exclusive knowledge, and the strange sense of power it gave him. Yes, it was all as good as over, and he was probably going to go down … but he had the power to bring that woman, that spider, that witch, down with him!

Suddenly he had no desire to destroy the tapes and the records. Let the authorities find them. Let them find everything! Maybe he’d even show them.

As for the Plan, if Kaseph and his Society are so all-knowing and so invincible, why should you tell them anything? Let them find out for themselves!

“Wouldn’t it be nice to see your dear Juleen sweating for once?” asked Lucius.

“It would be nice to see Juleen sweating for once,” Brummel muttered.

HANK AND MARSHALL
stepped out the basement door of the courthouse and found themselves all alone. Their friends were still congregated at the police department door, singing, talking, praying, demonstrating.

“Praise the Lord,” was all Hank could say.

“Oh, I believe it, I believe it,” Marshall answered.

It was John Coleman who first spotted them and let out a whoop. The others all turned their heads and were shocked and ecstatic. They came running up to Hank and Marshall like chickens to feed.

But they all made room for Mary, even gave her loving pushes forward as she ran by. The Lord was so good! Here was Hank’s dear Mary, weeping and hugging and kissing and whispering her love to him, and he could hardly believe it was really happening. He had never felt so separated from her before.

“Are you all right?” she kept asking him, and he kept telling her, “I’m just fine, just fine.”

“It’s a miracle,” said the others. “The Lord has answered our prayers. He got you out of prison just like Peter.”

Marshall understood when they virtually ignored him. This was Hank’s moment.

But what was going on over there? Through the heads, shoulders, and bodies Marshall noted Alf Brummel ducking quickly out the front
door and into his car. He sped away. The creep. If I were him, I’d duck out too.

And here came … No! No, it couldn’t be! Marshall started easing his way through the crowd, craning his neck to see for sure if the passengers in this just arriving car were who they seemed to be. Yes! Bernice was even waving to him! And there was Weed, alive! That other gal, the one driving … she couldn’t be! But she had to be! Susan Jacobson, back from the dead, no less!

Marshall made his way through Hank’s admirers and broke into a very brisk, wide-grinned walk to where Susan was just parking the car. Wow! When these people pray, God listens!

Bernice burst from the car and threw her arms around him.

“Marshall, are you all right?” she said, almost crying.

“Are you all right?” he asked her back.

A voice behind them said, “Oh, Mrs. Hogan, I’ve really wanted to meet you.”

It was Hank. Marshall looked at the man of God, standing there all smiles, with his little wife by his side and God’s people all behind him, and he felt the hug go out of his arms.

Bernice slipped limply out of the embrace.

“Hank,” said Marshall with a broken kind of tone Bernice had never heard from him before, “this is not my wife. This is Bernice Krueger, my reporter.” Then Marshall looked at Bernice and said with great love and respect, “And a good one, too!”

Bernice knew immediately that something had happened to Marshall. It didn’t surprise her; something had been happening to her too, and she could see in Marshall’s face and detect in his voice that same inner brokenness she had been feeling in herself. Somehow she knew that this young man standing next to Marshall had something to do with it all.

“And who is your fellow jailbird here?” she asked.

“Bernice Krueger, meet Hank Busche, pastor of Ashton Community Church and a very recent, very good friend of mine.”

She shook his hand, shoving all her thoughts and emotions aside. Time was running out.

“Marshall, listen carefully. We have a sixty-second crash course to give you!”

Hank excused himself and returned to his excited flock.

When Bernice introduced Susan to Marshall, he thought he was extending his hand to nothing less than a miracle.

“I’d heard that you’d been killed, and Kevin too.”

“I’m looking forward to sharing the whole story with you,” Susan replied pleasantly, “but right now our time is very short and there’s a lot you need to know.”

Susan opened the trunk of her car and showed Marshall the contents of her battle-weary suitcase. Marshall loved every minute of it. It was all there, everything he thought he’d lost to sticky-fingered Carmen and these creeps, this “Society.”

“Kaseph is coming to Ashton today to close the deal with the college board of regents. At 2 o’clock, the papers will be signed and the Whitmore College campus will be quietly sold to Omni Corporation.”

“The Society, you mean,” said Marshall.

“Of course. It’s a key move. When the college goes, the town will ultimately go with it.”

Bernice burst in with her news about Mattily, Parker, and Lemley, not to mention Harvey Cole’s untangling of Baylor’s records.

“So when do they get here?” Marshall asked.

“Hopefully in time for that board meeting. I told them to meet us there.”

“I just might invite myself to the meeting. I know they’ll all be very happy to see me.”

Susan touched Marshall’s arm and said, “But you need to be warned that they’ve been working on your daughter Sandy.”

“Don’t I know that!”

“They might have her under their influence right now; it’s Kaseph’s style, believe me. If you try to make a move against him, it could endanger her.”

Bernice told Marshall about Pat, about the diary, about the mysterious friend named Thomas, and about that deceiving devil’s advocate, Shawn Ormsby.

Marshall looked at them for a moment, then called, “Hank, this is where you and your people come in!”

A SUMMER SUNDAY
in Ashton is usually one of the happiest, carefree days of the week. The farmers jaw with each other; the storeclerks enjoy a leisurely pace; other business owners close up shop; moms, dads, and kids think of fun things to do and neat places to go. Many lawnchairs are occupied, the streets are a lot quieter, and families are usually together.

But this sunny, summer Sunday did not feel right to anyone: one farmer had a cow bloating on him while another had a tractor with a burned out magneto that no one seemed to have in stock; and though neither farmer was in any way responsible for the other’s problems, they still got into a fight about it. The storeclerks working today were having trouble counting change, and were getting into very uncomfortable discussions with the customers whose change they were trying to count. Every business owner had no desire but to get out of his or her business, because no matter what it was, it was doomed to fail sooner or later. Many wives were nervous and wanted to go somewhere, anywhere, they didn’t know where; their husbands would load the kids into all the station wagons, then the wives wouldn’t want to go anymore, then the kids would get into fights in the cars, then their parents would get into fights, and then the families would go nowhere while the station wagons remained parked in all those driveways with screams coming through their windows and their horns honking. The lawnchairs either ripped through under their owners’ bottoms or just plain couldn’t be found; the streets were hectic with frantic drivers driving with no destination in mind; the dogs, those ever vigilant dogs of Ashton, were barking and howling and whining again, this time with their fur bristling, their tails up, and their faces toward the east.